30 Days Of Night (DVD)

A small town in Alaska becomes the larder for a group of vampires taking advantage of the midwinter lack of sunlight. Josh Hartnett stars, Sam Raimi produces
Some critics have said that 30 Days Of Night revamps the vampire movie in the same way that 28 Days Later reinvigorated the zombie flick, but that's misleading. Certainly, the source comic-book by US writer Steve Niles and Australian artist Ben Templesmith gave the vampire back some teeth, steering away from the suave urban stereotype towards a feral predator, but the film adaptation isn't quite in the same league as 28 Days Later.

It's a slick film, directed by David Slade (Hard Candy), but it lacks the street-level guerrilla intensity and depth of Boyle's influential film. Instead, it plays out more like a semi-successful homage to John Carpenter's claustrophobic under-siege classics The Thing and Assault On Precinct 13.

The action takes place in Barrow, Alaska (actually recreated with an almost inconceivable amount of fake snow in New Zealand), a place 80 miles from the nearest small town. During one month in the winter, the sun never gets above the horizon, and the town's population drops from 563 to 152, as many can't face the psychological rigors of life without light. This year, however, the people who stayed on face a worse worry than Seasonal Adjustment Disorder. Yep, vampires are coming to town. First, however, a stranger (Foster) arrives.

The cops, lead by Sheriff Eben Oleson (Hartnett), find a pile of incinerated mobile phones. Then a helicopter is put out of action. And all the town's sled dogs are slaughtered. Eben thinks he's got to the bottom of these crimes when he arrests the stranger, but as he starts babbling "They're coming," the lights start to go out. "No way out of town, no one to come help. You can feel it. That cold ain't the weather, that's death approaching." He's right. A kiss (the collective noun, supposedly) of vampires arrives and starts feeding.

They're lead by Marlow, played by Danny Huston, who's the most prestigious actor here and lends some gravitas to proceedings as he mutters subtitled orders and utterances in the vampires' guttural tongue: "There is no escape. No hope. Only hunger and pain."

Huston, like the rest of the vampires, doesn't have much to do apart from make animal noises, stand around looking for prey and then jump on people. With their eyes twisted by CGI, wearing black contact lenses and dental prosthesis, the vampires resemble a freaky-looking bunch of blood-splattered goths. One shot stands out and brings home the hideousness of the situation - the camera floats over the town from 50 metres up, presenting the carnage, blood-stained snow, corpses and desperate shot-gun blasts ("keep shootin' 'em and they just keep comin'").

Verdict
A refreshing variation on the vampire movie formula, with a strong premise and a fair bit of splatter, but insufficient verve to last out its nearly two hour running time.